Photograph by Tom Pennington/Getty Images

Texas Gov. Rick Perry visits with fans prior to the start of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series NRA 500 on April 13, 2013 in Fort Worth, Texas.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry has  picked Chicago as his latest job-recruitment target, running print and Internet advertisements through a weekly business newspaper urging Illinois companies to move to the second-most populous state.

In February, radio ads launched by Perry asked California business owners to consider relocating to Texas, citing lower taxes and a more favorable regulatory environment. Those ads prompted California Gov. Jerry Brown to mock the campaign as a “burp, barely a fart.”

“This is part of the governor’s ongoing efforts to reach out to companies whose policies make it difficult to live and do business,” spokeswoman Lucy Nashed said in an e-mailed statement.

Texas has no income tax, compared with a 5 percent levy in Illinois, and union membership is much lower, Nashed said.

A call to Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn’s press aide, Brooke Anderson, was not immediately returned.

Texas had a 6.4 percent unemployment rate as of February, compared with a 9.5 percent rate in Illinois. Illinois has the lowest rating among the U.S. states by Moody’s Investors Service and Standard & Poor’s and both companies have it on negative outlook, meaning the grade could be cut further.

TexasOne, a public private partnership, is paying for the $38,450 of advertising in Crain’s Chicago Business, according to Perry’s statement.

Original post is Texas to Chicago: Send Us Your Overtaxed, Underemployed Masses by Political Capital.

Photograph by Karen Bleier/AFP via Getty Images

Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. speaks to reporters following a Democratic Caucus on August 1, 2011 at the Capitol.

Jesse L. Jackson Jr., the former Illinois Democratic congressman accused of using campaign funds for personal enrichment, once co-authored a book about the importance of financial planning and building wealth.

Jackson wrote the 1999 book “It’s About the Money!” along with his namesake father, the civil rights icon. The book’s subtitle is, “How You Can Get Out of Debt, Build Wealth, and Achieve Your Financial Dreams.”

The book includes “many inspiring stories of people who have learned how to manage their money, save on a regular basis, and plan for the future by building a nest egg,” according to a description on Random House’s Web-site.

Jackson, who resigned in November as a federal probe into his finances unfolded, was accused of converting $750,000 of campaign funds for personal use, including a $43,000 Rolex watch and Michael Jackson and Bruce Lee memorabilia.

Jackson will plead guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, mail fraud and making false statements, as Bloomberg’s John McCormick reported Feb. 16.

Original post is For Jackson Jr., It’s About the Money by Political Capital.

Photograph by Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

The Lincoln Memorial in Washington.

As Republican National Committee members meet in Charlotte to plot a way toward more electoral success, state parties are copying the national party’s reinvention study.

Pat Brady, chairman of the Illinois Republican Party, announced today that he’s forming his own Illinois Republican Party “Growth and Opportunity Project,” mirroring the name being used by the national party’s study effort.

In a statement, Brady said he was forming the committee to “conduct an in-depth analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the 2012 election cycle efforts” and “develop a comprehensive plan for the 2014 and 2016 elections.”

The RNC’s Growth and Opportunity Project was formed Dec. 10 by national Chairman Reince Priebus. Those working on the effort, which is focused on finding a more winning formula for the GOP from the local level to Congress and the presidency, are scheduled to brief reporters this afternoon on their progress. The group’s findings are expected to be released in March.

Finding a winning formula for Illinois Republicans in presidential races is an uphill battle. President Barack Obama won his home state by 16 percentage points in November, and Illinois hasn’t backed a Democrat for president since 1988.

Brady is pitching the reinvention study as part of an effort to try to retake the governor’s office from Pat Quinn, a Democrat with low job approval ratings who may be vulnerable.

“The Illinois Republican Party, the party of Abraham Lincoln, is at a critical point in its history,” he said. “The unfortunate reality is, that Illinois is run by Chicago Democrats who have brought our state to the brink of financial collapse and have exhibited no inclination towards getting our fiscal house in order.”

Original post is Republican Re-branding Mirrored by States: ‘Lincoln Republicans’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by Tina Paul/Camera Press/Redux

President Barack Obama shown in Times Square in New York.

That’s the number of electoral votes in the states that Democrats have won in six straight presidential elections.

The tally includes 18 states and the District of Columbia. The total of 242 electoral votes is just 28 below the 270 needed to win the presidency. The grouping includes California, New York and Illinois, which together have 104 electoral votes. President Barack Obama won those three states on Nov. 6 by an average of 26 percentage points.

Republicans sought to put some of the Democratic-voting states in play late in the 2012 campaign, making limited television buys and some campaign visits in states like Minnesota, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

In the end, though, the only two states that shifted to Republican in 2012 from Democratic four years earlier were Indiana and North Carolina, which had voted Republican for president for decades prior to 2008.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: 242 by Political Capital.

Photograph by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Rep. Tim Scott hakes hands with House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy in Washington.

Ironies abound with Rep. Tim Scott of South Carolina set to become just the fifth black to serve in the U.S. Senate since the post-Civil War Reconstruction era — and only the second who won’t be representing Illinois.

Scott, named today by Gov. Nikki Haley to replace fellow Republican Jim DeMint next month, will represent the state that produced slavery’s most fervant defenders and that was first to secede from the Union following Abe Lincoln’s election as president in 1860. Scott’s House district, which he initially won in 2010, includes Fort Sumter, where in April of 1861 the first shots were fired in the Civil War.

Scott’s political rise included serving as the co-chairman of Strom Thurmond’s final Senate campaign in 1996. That would be the same Thurmond who during the bulk of his career was an ardent segregationist and who in 1948 ran for president as a so-called “Dixiecrat” — carrying four states, including South Carolina.

The senator he knew and aided “had nothing to do with that,” Scott told the New York Times, noting that Thurmond had changed his tune on racial issues.

In his first House race, Scott won a runoff for the Republican nomination against Paul Thurmond, the former senator’s son. He cruised to victory in the general election, with 65 percent of the vote, and won re-election last month with 62 percent.

Scott, 47, has been strongly identified with the Tea Party movement, and in Congress he’s adhered to its principles — he was among the 22 House Republicans, for instance, who in August 2011 voted against the deal to raise the federal debt ceiling that his party leaders finally hashed out with President Barack Obama to barely avert a government loan default.

That type of voting record — plus the obvious need for Republicans to diversify their public face, given America’s changing demographics — had made Scott the odds-on favorite for the Senate appointment ever since DeMint, 61, announced earlier this month he had decided to leave the chamber to head the Heritage Foundation think tank in Washington.

Ed Brooke of Massachusetts bears the distinction of being the first black senator after Reconstruction ended by the early 1880s — and the South began erecting the racially discriminatory “Jim Crow” laws that once would have kept Scott from even being able to register to vote. Brooke was elected in 1966 and he was, like Scott, a Republican – but of a much different political slant. The party once included a liberal wing, and Brooke, who earlier this year turned 93, was part of it. He was a strong advocate, for example, of abortion rights.

After Brooke was defeated for a third term in 1978,  the Senate remained all-white until Democrat Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois won election in 1992. She lost re-election in 1998, but Illinois again filled the Senate’s racial void with Obama in 2oo4. Filling out the remainder of Obama’s term after his 2008 White House win was Roland Burris, another African-American Democrat. Burris didn’t run for a full term in 2010, and the seat was won that year by Republican Mark Kirk.

Original post is Tim Scott: South Carolina’s Odyssey by Political Capital.

Photograph by Scott Olson/Getty Images

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn looks over a drought-damaged ear of corn on the farm of Jerry Kitowski on July 16, 2012 in Waltonville, Illinois.

Unlike his two immediate predecessors, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn isn’t in prison.

Still, staying out of legal trouble hasn’t helped the Democrat’s approval ratings.

In a Public Policy Polling survey released late last month, Quinn’s job approval rating stood at 25 percent. That made him the most unpopular governor PPP has surveyed about anywhere in the country this year.

Quinn, 63, expressed little concern when asked about his ratings at a Bloomberg Breakfast with members of the Illinois media gathered at the news organization’s Chicago Bureau.

“I want to be the most honest governor in America,” he said. “I think we need that in Illinois.”

“I have two predecessors in jail, right now, at the same time,” he added. “I know what my mission is — it’s to straighten things out, to repair a lot of damage that’s been done in Illinois to the common good by bad, corrupt governors. And, you know, sometimes you have to do things that aren’t that popular, but are necessary.”

The former Illinois governors Quinn is referring to are George Ryan and Rod Blagojevich. Both men are in federal prison on public corruption charges.

Quinn’s poll ratings have triggered speculation that he might have a Democratic primary opponent in 2014.

“I have no idea,” he said of the prospect. “I’m happy to show up, file my petitions and take on anyone who wants to run in the primary.”

Among Democratic primary voters in the PPP survey, Quinn’s approval rating was 40 percent, with 43 percent disapproving of him. The poll found that Quinn would start out at a 64 percent to 20 percent deficit should Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan decide to get into the Democratic primary race.

Quinn denied that he was in a weakened negotiating position with state lawmakers on budget and pensions issues because of his low approval ratings.

“The approval rating really hasn’t changed much in several years, you know. It is what it is,” he said. “I really don’t care. I’m not in it to get higher approval ratings.”

Original post is Quinn Defends 25%: Bloomberg Bkfst by Political Capital.

The first lady has expressed zero interest in running for office, and she and President Barack Obama have generally shown a greater fondness for Chicago and Honolulu than Washington.

Still, she and her husband will be relatively young when they leave the White House in 2017 and might still want to consider second careers. And there is a precedent: Hillary Clinton became the first president’s wife elected to office in 2000, when she won her high-profile and expensive U.S. Senate race in New York. She took office in January 2001, just as she and President Bill Clinton were leaving the White House.

Michelle Obama leads Republican Kirk 51 percent to 40 percent in a hypothetical match-up in a survey of 500 Illinois voters taken Nov. 26-28 by Public Policy Polling. The automated telephone poll has a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points.

Kirk, who suffered a stroke in January, was elected in 2010. His office confirmed today that he plans to return to the Senate on Jan. 3.

The freshman senator has an approval rating of 34 percent in the poll, with 19 percent disapproving. Michelle Obama’s Illinois approval rating is 60 percent, even better than her husband’s home state rating of 57 percent.

Original post is Michelle Obama Would Lead Race for Husband’s Old Senate Job by Political Capital.

Photograph by Alex Wong/Getty Images

Rep. Joe Walsh, right, with Rep. Scott Rigell during a news conference to announce the formation of the 'Fix Congress Now Caucus' on Capitol Hill.

A super-political action committee that was active in a U.S. Senate race in Missouri now is working to re-elect a vulnerable Republican congressman in Illinois.

Now or Never PAC is spending at least $810,150 on media advertising to aid Joe Walsh, a freshman House member from suburban Chicago, the PAC said in a filing to the Federal Election Commission today.

Walsh is “a different kind of congressman” partly because he refused the congressional health-care and pension plans and has promised to serve no more than six years in Congress, a narrator says in the ad.

Democrats are working to make Walsh’s first term his last. He faces a difficult re-election campaign against Tammy Duckworth, an Iraq War veteran and former Veterans Affairs Department official, in a district that absorbed more Democrats in redistricting. The Cook Political Report rates the Walsh-Duckworth race as Likely Democratic.

Now or Never PAC previously backed the Missouri U.S. Senate candidacy of Sarah Steelman, a former state treasurer who placed third in an August Republican primary won by Representative Todd Akin.

The PAC had $450,636 in the bank as of July 18, the most recent date for which fundraising data are available, so it received an injection of funds in the past two months to cover the cost of the pro-Walsh ads. Super-PACs, which work independently to elect or oppose candidates, are permitted to accept donations in unlimited amounts.

Original post is Super-PAC Shifts Focus to Illinois U.S. House Race from Missouri by Political Capital.

Photograph by Steven Senne/AP Photo

A Mitt Romney supporter on March 19, 2011 in Peoria, Illinois.

Mitt Romney defeated Rick Santorum in the Illinois presidential primary yesterday by winning a majority of votes in metropolitan Chicago, easily overcoming his deficit in more culturally conservative and sparsely populated areas farther from the city.

Romney led Santorum by 47 percent to 35 percent with more than 99 percent of precincts counted, according to an Associated Press count this afternoon. Here’s how the vote broke down:

Chicago (5 percent of statewide vote): Romney won by 55 percent to 25 percent in the nation’s third most-populous city, which is a force in Democratic primaries but not in Republican contests.

Suburban Cook County (16 percent): Romney beat Santorum by 57 percent to 27 percent in the portion of Cook County outside Chicago. New Trier Township, which includes the wealthy communities of Wilmette and Winnetka in northeastern Cook, gave Romney 77 percent of the vote, tops among the 30 townships.

Collar Counties (31 percent): Romney won by 52 percent to 30 percent in the five counties that abut Cook — DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry and Will. Romney’s percentages ranged from 47 percent in McHenry to 56 percent in Lake.

Rest of state (47 percent): Santorum beat Romney by 42 percent to 38 percent in what is known as “downstate” Illinois. Many of these areas are more Southern than Midwestern in their political and cultural orientation. Santorum won 62 percent in Alexander County, a sparsely populated area in far southern Illinois that is as close to Jackson, Mississippi, or Birmingham, Alabama, as it is to Chicago.

Still, Santorum’s wins in lightly populated counties didn’t come close to overcoming Romney’s dominance in the Chicago suburbs. And Romney beat Santorum in some more populous downstate counties, including by more than 10 points in Sangamon County, which includes the state capital of Springfield, and in Macon County, which takes in Decatur.

Original post is Illinois Primary, By the Numbers by Political Capital.

Photograph by Damon Winter/The New York Times/Redux

Mitt and Ann Romney at his election night rally in Schaumburg, Illinois, on March 20, 2012.

That’s Mitt Romney’s approximate vote margin of victory over Rick Santorum in yesterday’s Republican presidential primary in Illinois, according to a nearly complete tally of votes by the Associated Press. It was one of Romney’s most sweeping victories in the nomination race to date, a win that netted him about 42 of the 54 delegates that were at stake even though Romney won less than a majority of the vote, 47 percent to 35 percent for Santorum.

Romney has run stronger in populous jurisdictions than in rural areas and Illinois was no exception: he won a statewide high of 57 percent in Cook County, which includes Chicago and is the state’s most populous voting jurisdiction. He had 56 percent in Lake County, just north of Cook, and 54 percent in DuPage, another Chicago suburb. Cook, Lake and DuPage together cast about 39 percent of the statewide vote, and Romney’s vote margin was about 103,000, or about 96 percent of his statewide margin of 107,000.

Original post is Magic Number of the Day: 107,000 by Political Capital.